The performances will be the culmination of a large-scale celebration featuring artists from the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theatres throughout the theatre season. Anniversary celebrations, including artists from the country’s two leading theatres, have recently taken place in Glinka’s birthplace, Smolensk. A series of concerts were held at the Smolensk Philharmonic and the Smolensk Drama Theatre, and a concert performance of the opera A Life for the Tsar was also presented.

Glinka’s name is closely linked with the history of the Mariinsky Theatre. Thus, it was on the stage of the Bolshoi (Kamenny) Theatre on Karuselnaya Square, from which the Mariinsky Theatre traces its history, that the world premieres of Glinka’s operas A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) took place. A Life for the Tsar was also performed at the opening of the first theatre season in 1860 in the new building, known today as the historic Mariinsky stage.

Both operas are still included in the repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre and continue to be popular with the audience almost two centuries later.

In 2004, Dmitry Chernyakov proposed his own interpretation — it was met with great enthusiasm and has become part of the history of modern opera theatre.

Moscow music lovers will be offered two versions of the performance to choose from: one with the Polish act, which pays tribute to the 1939 production, and the other where the dances of the Polish act were staged by Sergei Vikharev (2004).

But the Mariinsky Theatre does not forget the pages that were written in its glorious past. Leonid Baratov’s famous 1939 production with luxurious “historical” dances and costumes, familiar to many generations of audience members under the name Ivan Susanin, will also be shown on the Historic Stage of the Bolshoi Theatre.